Prufrock and other observations

PRUFROCK

T. S. ELIOT

PRUFROCK

AND

OTHER OBSERVATIONS

w

PRUFROCK

AND

OTHER OBSERVATIONS

BY

T. S. ELIOT

THE EGOIST LTD

OAKLEY HOUSE, BLOOMSBURY STREET

LONDON
1917

PRINTED AT THE COMPLETE PRESS

WEST NORWOOD

LONDON

TO

JEAN VERDENAL
1889-1915

Certain of these poems appeared first in
"Poetry" and "Others"

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK 9

PORTRAIT OF A LADY 17

PRELUDES 24

RHAPSODY ON A WINDY NIGHT 27

MORNING AT THE WINDOW 31

THE BOSTON EVENING TRANSCRIPT 32

AUNT HELEN 33

COUSIN NANCY 34

MR. APOLLINAX 35

HYSTERIA 37

CONVERSATION GALANTE 38

LA FIGLIA CHE PIANGE 39

The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock

S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza pin scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
Senza tema d'infamia ti nspondo.

LET us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table ;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells :

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question. * . .

9 B

io The Love Song of Prufrock

Oh, do not ask, " What is it ? "
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-
panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the

window-panes,

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from

chimneys,

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,

Rubbing its back upon the window-panes ;

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you

meet ;

There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate ;
Time for you and time for me,

The Love Song of Prufrock n

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, " Do I dare ? " and, " Do I dare ? "
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —
(They will say : " How his hair is growing

thin ! ")
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to

the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a

simple pin —
(They will say : " But how his arms and legs

are thin ! ")
Do I dare

Disturb the universe ?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will

reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them

all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

iz The Love Song of Prufrock

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons ;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume ?

And I have known the eyes already, known them

all—

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin

To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways ?
And how should I presume ?

And I have known the arms already, known them

all--
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown

hair!)

Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress ?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.

And should I then presume ?

And how should I begin ?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow
streets

The Love Song of Prufrock 13

And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of
windows ? . . .

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peace-
fully !

Smoothed by long fingers,

Asleep . . . tired ... or it malingers,

Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,

Have the strength to force the moment to its
crisis ?

But though I have wept and fasted, wept and
prayed,

Though I have seen my head (grown slightly
bald) brought in upon a platter,

I am no prophet — and here's no great matter ;

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my
coat, and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

14 The Love Song of Prufrock

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you

and me,

Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say : " I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all " —
If one, settling a pillow by her head,

Should say : " That is not what I meant at all ;

That is not it, at all."

And would it have been worth it, after all,

Would it have been worth while,

After the sunsets and the dooryards and the

sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the

skirts that trail along the floor —
And this, and so much more ? —
It is impossible to say just what I mean !
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in

patterns on a screen :
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say :
" That is not it at all,

That is not what I meant, at all."
* * * *

The Love Song of Prufrock 15

No ! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to

be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince ; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous ;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse ;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous —
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old ... I grow old ...

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind ? Do I dare to eat

a peach ?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon

the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown

back
When the wind blows the water white and

black.

1 6 The Love Song of Prufrock

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and

brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Portrait of a Lady

Thou hast committed —

Fornication : but that was in another country ,

And besides, the wench is dead.

THE JEW OF MALTA

I

AMONG the smoke and fog of a December after-
noon

You have the scene arrange itself — as it will seem
to do —

With " I have saved this afternoon for you " ;

And four wax candles in the darkened room,

Four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead,

An atmosphere of Juliet's tomb

Prepared for all the things to be said, or left
unsaid.

We have been, let us say, to hear the latest
Pole

17

1 8 Portrait of a Lady

Transmit the Preludes, through his hair and finger-
tips.

" So intimate, this Chopin, that I think his soul

Should be resurrected only among friends

Some two or three, who will not touch the bloom

That is rubbed and questioned in the concert
room."

— And so the conversation slips

Among velleities and carefully caught regrets

Through attenuated tones of violins

Mingled with remote cornets

And begins.

' You do not know how much they mean to me,

my friends,

And how, how rare and strange it is, to find
In a life composed so much, so much of odds and

ends,
(For indeed I do not love it ... you knew ?

you are not blind !
How keen you are !)
To find a friend who has these qualities,
Who has, and gives

Those qualities upon which friendship lives.
How much it means that I say this to you —
Without these friendships — life, what cauchemar! "
Among the windings of the violins

Portrait of a Lady 19

And the ariettes

Of cracked cornets

Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins

Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own,

Capricious monotone

That is at least one definite " false note."

— Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance,

Admire the monuments

Discuss the late events,

Correct our watches by the public clocks.

Then sit for half an hour and drink our bock».

II

Now that lilacs are in bloom

She has a bowl of lilacs in her room

And twists one in her fingers while she talks.

" Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not

know

What life is, you who hold it in your hands " ;
(Slowly twisting the lilac stalks)
" You let it flow from you, you let it flow,
And youth is cruel, and has no remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see/'
I smile, of course,
And go on drinking tea.

20 Portrait of a Lady

' Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow

recall

My buried life, and Paris in the Spring,
I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world
To be wonderful and youthful, after all."

The voice returns like the insistent out-of-tune
Of a broken violin on an August afternoon :
" I am always sure that you understand
My feelings, always sure that you feel,
Sure that across the gulf you reach your hand.

You are invulnerable, you have no Achilles''

heel.

You will go on, and when you have prevailed
You can say : at this point many a one has

failed.

But what have I, but what have I, my friend,
To give you, what can you receive from me ?
Only the friendship and the sympathy
Of one about to reach her journey's end.

I shall sit here, serving tea to friends. ..."

I take my hat : how can I make a cowardly

amends
For what she has said to me ?

Portrait of a Lady 21

You will see me any morning in the park

Reading the comics and the sporting page.

Particularly I remark

An English countess goes upon the stage.

A Greek was murdered at a Polish dance,

Another bank defaulter has confessed.

I keep my countenance,

I remain self-possessed

Except when a street piano, mechanical and tired

Reiterates some worn-out common song

With the smell of hyacinths across the garden

Recalling things that other people have desired.

Are these ideas right or wrong ?

Ill

The October night comes down ; returning as

before

Except for a slight sensation of being ill at ease
I mount the stairs and turn the handle of the door
And feel as if I had mounted on my hands and

knees.

" And so you are going abroad ; and when do

you return ?
But that's a useless question.

22 Portrait of a Lady

You hardly know when you are coming back,

You will find so much to learn. "

My smile falls heavily among the bric-a-brac.

" Perhaps you can write to me."
My self-possession flares up for a second ;
This is. as I had reckoned.
" I have been wondering frequently of late
(But our beginnings never know our ends !)
Why we have not developed into friends."
I feel like one who smiles, and turning shall remark
Suddenly, his expression in a glass.
My self-possession gutters ; we are really in the
dark.

" For everybody said so, all our friends,

They all were sure our feelings would relate

So closely ! I myself can hardly understand.

We must leave it now to fate.

You will write, at any rate.

Perhaps it is not too late.

I shall sit here, serving tea to friends."

And I must borrow every changing shape
To find expression . . . dance, dance
Like a dancing bear,
Cry like a parrot, chatter like an ape.
Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance —

Portrait of a Lady 23

Well ! and what if she should die some afternoon,
Afternoon grey and smoky, evening yellow and

rose ;

Should die and leave me sitting pen in hand
With the smoke coming down above the house-
tops ;

Doubtful, for quite a while
Not knowing what to feel or if I understand
Or whether wise or foolish, tardy or too soon . . .
Would she not have the advantage, after all ?
This music is successful with a " d}dng fall "
Now that we talk of dying —
And should I have the right to smile ?

Preludes

THE winter evening settles down

With smell of steaks in passageways.

Six o'clock.

The burnt-out ends of smoky days.

And now a gusty shower wraps

The grimy scraps

Of withered leaves about your feet

And newspapers from vacant lots ;

The showers beat

On broken blinds and chimney-pots,

And at the corner of the street

A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.

And then the lighting of the lamps.

Preludei 25

II

The morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells of beer
From the sawdust-trampled street
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.

With the other masquerades
That time resumes,
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.

Ill

You tossed a blanket from the bed,

You lay upon your back, and waited ;

You dozed, and watched the night revealing

The thousand sordid images

Of which your soul was constituted^;

They flickered against the ceiling.

And when all the world came back

And the light crept up between the shutters,

And you heard thefsparrows in the gutters,

You had such a vision of the street

As the street hardly understands ;

c

26 Preludes

Sitting along the bed's edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.

IV

His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o'clock ;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.

I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling :
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh ;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

Rhapsody on a Windy Night

TWELVE o'clock.

Along the reaches of the street

Held in a lunar synthesis,

Whispering lunar incantations

Dissolve the floors of the memory

And all its clear relations,

Its divisions and precisions,

Every street lamp that I pass

Beats like a fatalistic drum,

And through the spaces of the dark

Midnight shakes the memory

As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

Half-past one,
The street lamp sputtered,
The street lamp muttered,
The street lamp said, " Regard that woman
Who hesitates toward you in the light of the door
Which opens on her like a grin.

27

a8 Rhapsody on a Windy Night

You see the border of her dress
Is torn and stained with sand,
And you see the corner of her eye
Twists like a crooked pin."

The memory throws up high and dry

A crowd of twisted things ;

A twisted branch upon the beach

Eaten smooth, and polished

As if the world gave up

The secret of its skeleton,

Stiff and white.

A broken spring in a factory yard,

Rust that clings to the form that the strength

has left
Hard and curled and ready to snap.

Half-past two,

The street lamp said,

" Remark the cat which flattens itself in the

gutter,

Slips out its tongue

And devours a morsel of rancid butter."
So the hand of a child, automatic,
Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running

along the quay.

I could see nothing behind that child's eye.
I have seen eyes in the street

Rhapsody on a Windy Night 29

Trying to peer through lighted shutters,
And a crab one afternoon in a pool,
An old crab with barnacles on his back,
Gripped the end of a stick which I held him.

Half-past three,

The lamp sputtered,

The lamp muttered in the dark.

The lamp hummed :

" Regard the moon,

La lune ne garde aucune rancune,

She winks a feeble eye,

She smiles into corners.

She smoothes the hair of the grass.

The rnqon has lost her memory.

A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,

Her hand twists a paper rose,

That smells of dust and old Cologne,

She is alone

With all the old nocturnal smells

That cross and cross across her brain.

The reminiscence comes

Of sunless dry geraniums

And dust in crevices,

Smells of chestnuts in the streets,

And female smells in shuttered rooms,

30 Rhapsody on a Windy Night

And cigarettes in corridors
And cocktail smells in bars."

The lamp said,

" Four o'clock,

Here is the number on the door.

Memory !

You have the key,

The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair,

Mount.

The bed is open ; the tooth-brush hangs on the

wall,
Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for

life."

The last twist of the knife.

Morning at the Window

THEY are rattling breakfast plates in basement

kitchens,

And along the trampled edges of the street
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
Sprouting despondently at area gates.

The brown waves of fog toss up to me
Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,
And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts
An aimless smile that hovers in the air
And vanishes along the level of the roofs.

The Boston Evening Transcript

THE readers of the Boston Evening Transcript
Sway in the wind like a field of ripe corn.

When evening quickens faintly in the street,

Wakening the appetites of life in some

And to others bringing the Boston Evening

Transcript,

I mount the steps and ring the bell, turning
Wearily, as one would turn to nod good-bye to

Rochefoucauld,
If the street were time and he at the end of the

street,
And I say, " Cousin Harriet, here is the Boston

Evening Transcript."

Aunt Helen

Miss HELEN SLINGSBY was my maiden aunt,
And lived in a small house near a fashionable

square

Cared for by servants to the number of four.
Now when she died there was silence in heaven
And silence at her end of the street.
The shutters were drawn and the undertaker

wiped his feet —
He was aware that this sort of thing had occurred

before.

The dogs were handsomely provided for,
But shortly afterwards the parrot died too.
The Dresden clock continued ticking on the

mantelpiece,

And the footman sat upon the dining-table
Holding the second housemaid on his knees —
Who had always been so careful while her mistress

lived.

33

Cousin Nancy

Miss NANCY ELLICOTT

Strode across the hills and broke them,

Rode across the hills and broke them —

The barren New England hills —

Riding to hounds

Over the cow-pasture.

Miss Nancy Ellicott smoked

And danced all the modern dances ;

And her aunts were not quite sure how they felt

about it,
But they knew that it was modern.

Upon the glazen shelves kept watch
Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith,
The army of unalterable law.

34

Mr, Apollinax

WHEN Mr. Apollinax visited the United States

His laughter tinkled among the teacups.

I thought of Fragilion, that shy figure among the

birch-trees,

And of Priapus in the shrubbery
Gaping at the lady in the swing.
In the palace of Mrs. Phlaccus, at Professor

Channing-Cheetah's
He laughed like an irresponsible foetus.
His laughter was submarine and profound
Like the old man of the sea's
Hidden under coral islands
Where worried bodies of drowned men drift down

in the green silence,
Dropping from fingers of surf.
I looked for the head of Mr. Apollinax rolling

under a chair,
Or grinning over a screen
With seaweed in its hair.1

35

36 Mr. Apollinax

I heard the beat of centaurs' hoofs over the hard

turf
As his dry and passionate talk devoured the

afternoon.
"He is a charming man " — " But after all what

did he mean ? " —

" His pointed ears ... he must be unbalanced/' —
" There was something he said that I might have

challenged/'
Of dowager Mrs. Phlaccus, and Professor and

Mrs. Cheetah
I remember a slice of lemon, and a bitten

macaroon.

Hysteria

As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved
in her laughter and being part of it, until her
teeth were only accidental stars with a talent
for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps,
inhaled at each momentary recovery, lost finally
in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by
the ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter
with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading
a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty
green iron table, saying : "If the lady and
gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden,
if the lady and gentleman wish to take their
tea in the garden ..." I decided that if the
shaking of her breasts could be stopped, some of
the fragments of the afternoon might be collected,
and I concentrated my attention with careful
subtlety to this end.

37

Conversation Galante

I OBSERVE : " Our sentimental friend the moon !
Or possibly (fantastic, I confess)
It may be Prester John's balloon
Or an old battered lantern hung aloft
To light poor travellers to their distress."
She then : " How you digress ! "

And I then : " Some one frames upon the keys
That exquisite nocturne, with which we explain
The night and moonshine ; music which we seize
To body forth our own vacuity."

She then : " Does this refer to me ? "

" Oh no, it is I who am inane."

" YDU, madam, are the eternal humorist,
The eternal enemy of the absolute,
Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist !
With your air indifferent and imperious
At a stroke our mad poetics to confute — "
And — " Are we then so serious ? "
' 38

La Figlia Che Piange

STAND on the highest pavement of the stair —

Lean on a garden urn —

Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair —

Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise —

Fling them to the ground and turn

With a fugitive resentment in your eyes :

But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

So I would have had him leave,
So I would have had her stand and grieve,
So he would have left

As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised,
As the mind deserts the body it has used.
I should find

Some way incomparably light and deft,
Some way we both should understand,
Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the
hand.

40 La Figlia Che Piange

She turned away, but with the autumn weather

Compelled my imagination many days,

Many days and many hours :

Her hair over her arms and her arms full of

flowers.
And I wonder how they should have been

together !

I should have lost a gesture and a pose.
Sometimes these cogitations still amaze
The troubled midnight and the noon's repose.